Books by Arturo Longoria

Friday, July 22, 2016

TODAY’S BUSHCRAFT PANORAMA

The various schools of thought associated with the word
bushcraft continue to widen as the realities of contemporary life, at least in
the Modern World, alter the meaning of the word. Let it suffice to say that aside from the
extreme few who claim to have spent months isolated in the boondocks dressed in
skins and living a “paleo” life, most contemporary bushcrafters drive to a
site, set up their modern gear and then sit around fiddling with bow-drills or
carving spoons and the like.In fact for
many, bushcraft has become a form of recreation where occasionally people
envision scenarios where they’re cast into the wilderness and forced to survive
with nothing more than a knife and a smattering of skills.How many YouTube videos have you seen where
people say they need robust knives in case they are ever thrown into a
desperate “survival situation.”Our YouTube
friends will baton a branch, make feather sticks, spark a fire, do a little
whittling, eat a couple of wild berries, and then walk back to the house (some
are videotaping in their backyard) or they’ll return to their car via a public
trail and then drive to their casa all
the while dreaming of the day when they’ll be free of the chaos and insanity of
today’s world.Who can blame them?It’s not as if they’re hunting mastodons or
battling saber tooth cats, but instead busy indulging in freeway sign language
or enduring the propaganda and associated distortions generated by cable news
networks, plutocrats and the entrenched oligarchy.It’s a mad world indeed.

Of course, the reality of paleo life said you’d most likely
be dead before the age of thirty-five if you were a man, and if you were a
woman your chances of getting past your first pregnancy were fifty-fifty. Regardless, you’d be pretty much blind by the
age of forty with rotting teeth, arthritic joints and any number of other ailments. Alas it seems though that the current fascinations
with a “survival situation” stem mostly from underlying depressions doused with
free-floating anxiety and an ever increasing sense of hopelessness about the
course this world is going. After all,
for a lot of people today’s world seems to make less and less sense. It turns out that the mantra of endless
“growth and development” invented by some pallid and infinitely
tunneled-visioned economist was not without its unintended consequences. Amid this contemporary milieu modern humans
are already enduring a frightful “survival situation.” It’s intriguing (and simultaneously disgusting)
to hear politicians and business moguls speak endlessly of more growth and more
development and more fracking and more people and more and more and more. All the while, those of us who long for a
respite in the wilds are forced into ever decreasing places. I think often of those of you who long for a
quiet spot to sit and make a fire and perhaps carve a spoon or bake some bread
or maybe just do nothing at all but simply live in the moment…free of noise and
pollution and the interminable ramblings of those who have no interest in
nature or bushcraft or quiet or perhaps even peace.

Our world population is growing so rapidly that it is indeed frightening.
I would give you a number but within
less than one minute that number would have already climbed significantly. It will not suffice for me to say that we are
at 7.5 billion humans worldwide because that number will be archaic in a few
months. Don’t believe me? Then please look here: http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

Population ecologists have concluded that the world reached
its maximum carrying capacity at
about four billion people. We have
therefore overshot that mark and are speeding into what some claim will be oblivion. This reality is nothing new to the scientists
and mathematicians who have studied these facts for decades. But today, at least in some circles, there is
a war on science. People are encouraged
to ignore data, facts, proof and the like.
Meanwhile the wood-be bushcrafter and naturalist is left to suffer an
ever increasing population density with deforested lands and vanishing creeks
and lakes as well as the encroaching sounds of bulldozers, fracking rigs,
chainsaws, pneumatic hammers and that jet stream of autos shooting down
highways at all hours. Yes, I think
about many of you who must live in the chaos and yet who dream just for a few
hours in a quiet spot somewhere, perhaps once a week if nothing else.

So what does bushcraft mean today in this world where
unfettered industrialism is sacrosanct? Are
you to simply grin and bear it? Ultimately,
each one of you will be the judge of that, but if the emails I receive weekly
are any indication of the mood of many fellow woods roamers then for a lot of
people the boiling point has been reached.
Please notice the number of YouTube videos on “stealth camping.” It seems that for many a decision has been
reached to hang it all and go into the woods and camp out regardless of whom
might say different. Paradoxically, the
accompanying attitude is to “leave no trace,” and make invisibility the object
that accompanies the silence. Compare
this ethic to those YouTube videos of hobo camps and druggy enclaves where
refuse is left as if it were a landfill.
But not the bushcrafter or naturalist (they should be one and the same)
who enters without leaving a trace, who camps in thickets and forests like a
phantom never seen or heard. No trace,
no sign, no smells, no colors, no sounds.
The modern bushcrafter has become a minimalist who abhors impacting
nature near or far. The idea is to
disappear beyond the trails noiselessly as if nothing more than a tiny breeze
blowing through the brush. I received an
email from someone recently who said, “I’m getting old and [I’ve] been shut out
all my life. At home the noise of trucks
and sirens everything else drives me nuts.”
So he sneaks into the woods nearby on Friday and if possible doesn’t
come out until after dark on Sunday.
During the week he distracts himself with bushcraft and wilderness
videos. “I’ll be retiring in December,”
he said. He plans to spend as much of
his time as possible camping ghostlike in the nearby woods.

3 comments:

Excellent article Arturo were is it going to end? The Easter island history is coming to mind.I'm of in my canoe tomorrow for a night stealt camping anyway,hope I don't get caught out,in this little island that can happen quite easly.Take care.

Almost a year later and I needed to re-read this article. Still poignant. Anymore, I like to lock my gate and retreat to my "sanctuary" and spend time with the flora and fauna that I've come to know so well. I just can't take the hustle and bustle anymore. Great article as always. Cheers, Jeff